Hearst  Fountain 


he  Winning  of  the  West 


CHARLES    REYNOLDS   BROWN 


The  Winning  of  the  West 


CHARLES    REYNOLDS    BROWN 


1910 

PROGRESS  PRESS  PRINT 
OAKLAND,     CAL. 


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The  Winning  of  the  West 

"On  the  west  side  shp,irie  itie  standard  of 
e  camp  of  Ephraim"  -^-Num^er^  ;2 :18.'^;  : 

HE  Twelve  Tribes  of  Israel  took  their 
names  for  the  most  part  from  the 
twelve  sons  of  Jacob.  But  Ephraim 
was  not  a  son;  he  was  a  grandson. 
He  was  the  younger,  the  more  vigorous  and 
promising  son  of  Joseph.  He  was  the  one  on 
whom  Jacob,  the  aged  grandfather,  laid  his 
right  hand  when  he  was  asked  to  bless  the  two 
boys.  He  gave  his  left  hand  to  Mannasseh, 
the  elder,  who  might  naturally  have  been  the 
privileged  one.  And  in  the  estimate  of  the 
author  of  Genesis  this  action  was  prophetic. 
The  Tribe  of  Ephraim  became  perhaps  the 
most  powerful  tribe  in  early  Israel.  It  was 
brave,  resolute,  enterprising.  It  pushed  out  to 
the  north  and  west,  thus  extending  the  borders 
of  the  land  of  promise.  On  the  west  side  shall 
be  the  standard  of  the  Tribe  of  Ephraim ! 

Westward  the  spirit  of  progress  and  of  lead- 
ership takes  its  even  way.  From  Persia  to 
Greece,  where  Alexander  of  Macedon  wept  be- 
cause there  were  no  more  worlds  to  conquer! 
Then  from  Greece  to  Italy,  when  the  Roman 
Legions  were  victorious  everywhere,  and 
Caesar's  name  was  supreme  throughout  the 

679902 


THE:   WINNING   OF   THE:   WEST 


then  known  world !  Then  from  Italy  to  Great 
Britain,  to/ an; Empire  ruled  from  the  Thames 
ancL  stretching  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  to 
the  gou:g  down  of  it !  And  now  from  Great 
to  Greater  Britain,  to  that  larger  body  of  in- 
fluence furnished  by  all  the  members  of  the 
English  speaking  race  as  it  registers  itself 
upon  the  life  of  the  world ! 

Westward  the  spirit  of  progress  and  of  lead- 
ership takes  its  steady  way.  Here  in  our  own 
great  west,  in  the  widest  stretch  of  contiguous 
territory  occupied  anywhere  by  this  dominant 
race,  the  movement  pauses  for  its  final  effort. 
There  is  no  further  west  to  which  it  may  emi- 
grate. Yonder  is  the  Orient,  the  east  again! 
On  the  west  side  then  shall  be  the  standard  of 
this  influential  tribe  of  Ephraim. 

Our  own  country  has  a  magnificent  oppor- 
tunity for  influence.  Its  resources  are  vast  and 
for  the  most  part  scarcely  touched.  Here  in 
the  United  States  surveyors  have  found 
twenty  times  as  much  coal  as  in  all  Europe 
put  together — stored  up  warmth  and  power 
and  life.  England  must  go  three  thousand 
miles  for  every  boll  of  cotton  she  spins,  while 
here  cotton  grows  on  the  surface  of  the  ground 
where  the  coal  and  iron  are  hidden  which  will 
spin  it  into  cloth.  Here  are  wide  acres  of  ara- 
ble land.  Take  the  single  State  of  Texas  and 
lay  it  upon  the  map  of  Europe !  The  north 


THE     WINNING    OF    THE    WEST 


end  of  it  would  be  in  the  mountains  of  Nor- 
way, the  west  side  at  London,  the  east  side  at 
Warsaw  in  Russia,  and  the  southern  end,  hav- 
ing stretched  down  across  Denmark,  Germany 
and  Austria,  would  rest  upon  Northern  Italy 
and  in  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean.  And 
this  is  Texas  alone ! 

Here  is  room  for  people  to  breathe  and  move 
and  grow.  In  France  there  are  one  hundred 
and  eighty  people  to  the  square  mile ;  in  Ger- 
many, two  hundred  and  eighteen;  in  England, 
four  hundred  and  twenty-eight.  In  the  United 
States,  excluding  the  sparsely  settled  territory 
of  Alaska,  there  are  only  eighteen.  Here  is 
room  for  a  mighty  race.  If  the  United  States 
were  populated  as  thickly  as  England  it  would 
be  supporting  now  in  place  of  its  eighty  mil- 
lions more  than  eleven  hundred  millions  of 
people. 

Here  also  is  energy,  enterprise,  inventive 
ability.  When  they  held  the  International 
Electrical  Exposition  at  Paris  a  few  years  ago 
they  offered  five  gold  medals  as  capital  prizes 
for  th0  greatest  inventions  and  discoveries. 
Five  out  of  the  five  were  brought  to  the  United 
States  by  our  own  inventors.  It  was  Charles 
Darwin,  writing  not  as  a  promoter,  but  as  a 
man  of  science,  who  said,  "The  wonderful 
progress  of  the  United  States  is  the  result  of 
natural  selection.  The  more  energetic,  rest- 


THE:     WINNING     OF     THE     WEST 


less,  courageous  people  from  all  parts  of 
Europe  have  for  ten  or  twelve  generations  emi- 
grated to  that  country  and  there  have  suc- 
ceeded best." 

This  country  is  mighty  now  in  the  councils 
of  the  worl'd  and  mighty  in  the  impress  it 
makes  upon  unfolding  history.  What  a  giant 
it  will  be  when  all'  these  wide  unutilized  spaces 
are  rilled  up  and  its  population  no  longer 
eighty  millions  but  two  hundred  or  five  hun- 
dred millions  of  souls !  How  vital,  not  only 
for  the  preservation  of  the  Republic,  but  for 
the  progress  of  the  race,  that  these  vigorous 
people  should  live  under  the  influence  of  the 
highest  principles  and  ideals  there  are ! 

And  in  the  shaping  of  this  history  our  own 
section  here  in  the  west,  where  the  standards 
of|  Ephraim  are  afloat,  is  to  bear  a  most  im- 
portant part.  In  the  west  the  precious  metals, 
gold,  silver,  and  even  copper,  are  stored  and 
mined  for  the  enrichment  of  the  race.  In  the 
west  scientific  forestry  and  irrigation  are 
working  a  change  which  will  give  the  next 
generation  an  advantage  like  the  one  enjoyed 
by  the  generation  now  passing  in  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Mississippi  Valley.  We  are  not 
content  today  to  allow  a  few  greedy  men  to 
skin  the  country  for  the  hide  and  leave  the 
carcass  of  it  for  those  who  come  later.  The 
conservation  of  forests  and  of  soils  is  chang- 


THE:   WINNING   OF   THE: 


ing  all  that.  In  the  estimation  of  government 
experts  thirty-seven  per  cent  of  what  is  now 
arid  land  may  be  reclaimed  by  irrigation  for 
farming  purposes  and  sixty  per  cent  of  it  for 
grazing.  What  was  once  entered  upon  the 
map  as  "The  Great  American  Desert"  is  now 
supporting  a  happy  population  and  large  sec- 
tions of  it  are  selling  for  a  hundred  dollars 
an  acre  as  farm  land. 

What  mighty  possibilities  also  lie  around 
this  greatest  sea!  Only  a  man  of  prophetic 
mood  who  can  see  visions  and  dream  dreams 
has  any  conception  of  the  pages  of  history 
here  to  be  unrolled.  Look  at  the  accomplish- 
ments which  lie  within  the  memory  of  people 
yet  alive !  When  the  nineteenth  century 
opened  and  for  several  decades  after  the  lonely 
keels  of  a  few  whaling  ships  plowed  their  way 
through  the  Pacific,  and  that  was  all.  This 
mighty  sea  and  these  shores  and  islands  re- 
mained as  in  the  days  of  Phoenicia  and  Tyre. 

One  century  has  passed,  and  now  look  at  it ! 
In  that  time  the  mighty  commonwealth  of 
Australia  has  come  to  be  under  the  Southern 
Cross.  New  Zealand  has  come  to  be  a  leader 
among  the  nations  in  the  spirit  of  prosperous 
democracy.  The  lovely  Islands  of  Hawaii 
have  become  sources  of  wealth,  of  culture  and 
of  noble  Christian  service.  Alaska  has  been 
yielding  its  rich  returns.  Japan  has  become 


8  THE     WINNING    OF    THE     WEST 

awake  and  alive,  taking  her  seat  in  the  Par- 
liament of  Man,  in  the  federation  of  the  world. 
China  is  stirring,  and  no  one  is  brave  enough 
to  say  how  much  that  may  mean — picture  the 
wants  of  China  a  century  hence,  when  four 
hundred  millions  of  people  are  hungering  for 
the  best  comforts  of  earth !  Here  on  our  own 
coast  in  that  time  three  mighty  States,  Wash- 
ington, Oregon  and  California,  have  come  to 
be  influential  factors  in  the  nation  and  in  the 
life  of  the  world.  And  all  this  in  less  than  a 
hundred  years ! 

I  have  stood  on  the  top  of  Mount  Diablo 
and  the  vision  which  opened  up  was  magnifi- 
cent. I  looked  to  the  east  across  the  wide  and 
fertile  San  Joaquin  on  to  the  point  where  I 
could  see  two  hundred  miles  of  snowr-capped 
Sierras,  with  their  stores  of  beauty,  of  health 
and  of  mineral  values.  I  looked  to  the  south, 
where  stretched  the  Santa  Clara  Valley,  with 
its  orchards  and  its  gardens.  I  looked  to  the 
north,  where  grow  the  great  forests  of  pine 
and  of  redwood.  I  looked  to  the  west  across 
this  Bay  and  out  through  the  Golden  Gate 
upon  that  widest  of  all  seas.  And  the  thought 
of  the  history  to  be  made  here  was  like  a  fresh 
vision  of  God. 

When  Napoleon's  army  was  in  the  Valley 
of  the  Nile  he  drew  it  up  in  battle  array  and 
pointing  to  the  Pyramids  cried  out,  "Forty  cen- 


WINNING  OF   THE:   WEST 


turies  1'ook  down  upon  you."  From  the  top  of 
this  pyramid  of  opportunity  we  may  look  down 
upon  forty  centuries  of  significant  history 
to  be  made  around  that  sea.  It  is  a  vision  to 
summon-  into  action  the  best  in  this  race  of 
ours,  the  best  we  have  in  this  western  world, 
where  float  the  standards  of  Ephraim. 

The  voice  of  God  is  calling  "Be  ready,  for 
in  such  an  hour  as  ye  think  not  some  new  and 
weightier  responsibility  may  be  yours!  Be  ye 
therefore  ready!  Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the 
Lord.  Make  His  paths  straight  that  His  ad- 
vancing kingdom  may  walk  therein  with  swift 
feet.  Every  valley  shall  be  exalted,  every 
mountain  shall  be  brought  low;  the  crooked 
made  straight  and  the  rough  places  plain,  that 
all  flesh  may  see  the  salvation  of  our  God." 
It  is  for  you,  you  who  in  the  providence  of 
God  have  come  to  this  place  of  opportunity 
for  such  a  time  as  this,  to  see  to  it  that  this 
eager,  pulsating,  influential  stream  of  life  here 
upon  this  coast  is  brought  under  the  consecra- 
tion and  leadership  of  Christian  forces. 

When  Abraham  had  the  vision  which  formed 
our  morning  lesson,  when  he  came  to  see  that  if 
he  and  his  descendants  enjoyed  the  blessing  of 
righteousness  other  nations  would  be  blessed 
in  them,  he  set  about  his  task  with  all  serious- 
ness. He  went  here  and  there  building  altars 
to  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Hosts.  He  would  have 


10  THE;   WINNING   OF   THE:   WEST 

men  called  to  worship.  He  would  have  them 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  highest  concep- 
tion of  the  Divine  the  race  then  enjoyed.  He 
would  have  them  nourished  upon  those  truths 
which  marched  at  the  head  of  the  moral  prog- 
ress of  that  day,  leading  it  on  as  by  a  pillar 
of  cloud  and  of  fire.  And  as  we  enjoy  the 
same  vision  and  hear  the  Divine  Voice  say, 
"I  will  bless  thee  and  thou  shalt  be  a  blessing; 
I  will1  make  thy  name  great  and  in  thee  shall 
all  the  nations  of  the  earth  be  blessed" — it  is 
for  us  in  turn  to  build  our  altars  unto  the 
living  God  in  every  mining  town  and  lumber 
camp,  in  the  neglected  parts  of  the  cities  and 
in  every  spot  of  spiritual  need  that  men  and 
women  may  be  led  in  the  way  of  life  eternal. 

We  have  a  great  responsibility  here  in  this 
State,  and  every  time  the  hands  of  the  clock 
reach  high  noon  our  obligation  is  increased. 
The  breaking  up  of  the  great  wide  ranches  like 
the  Glenn  Ranch  and  others  in  the  Sacramento 
and  San  Joaquin  Valleys  into  smaller  hold- 
ings means  the  multiplication  of  the  popula- 
tion by  ten  and  then  by  twenty  and  then  by  a 
hundred.  Even  now  in  the  middle  west,  where 
land  has  become  so  dear  as  to  be  prohibitive 
to  men  of  small  means  and  large  families,  and 
in  the)  east  and  in  Europe,  many  families  have 
their  goods  packed  up  and  are  waiting  for  to- 
morrow to  start  to  California.  The  develop- 


THE     WINNING     OF     THE     WEST  11 

ment  of  electric  power  in  unprecedented  meas- 
ure in  Northern  California  means  new  facilities 
for  transportation,  for  manufacture,  with  all 
the  attendant  advantages.  The  opening  of  the 
Panama  Canal  will  not  only  give  us  in  effect 
a  coast  line  stretching  continuously  from 
Eastport,  Maine,  to  Seattle,  it  will  mean  the 
coming  of  ships  direct  from  Europe,  bringing 
immigrants  to  fill  up  these  vast  places  with  a 
busy  and  prosperous  people.  The  voice  of 
God  is  calling  us  to  be  ready  to  meet  all  that — 
to  be  ready  to  receive  that  greater  population 
and  teach  it,  wash  it  in  baptism  and  enroll  it 
in  the  service  of  the  Son  of  God ! 

We  have  a  great  responsibility,  but  many 
Christian  people  seem  to  be  unaware  of  the 
obligation.  There  are  Christians  here  from 
older  sections  of  our  country  who  have  lost 
their  church  letters  and  their  church  habits  and 
convictions  on  the  way.  They  dropped  them 
at  Ogden  or  Winnemucca  perhaps.  In  break- 
ing away  from  some  of  the  conventions  of  the 
less  plastic  life  of  the  east  they  also  broke 
away  from  some  of  the  principles  of  action. 
You  could  name  any  number  of  people  who  in 
Massachusetts,  in  Ohio,  in  IowTa,  were  active 
and  earnest  Christians,  but  now  in  California 
they  have  caught  the  pleasure  seeking,  pleas- 
ure loving  mood,  and  in  place  of  helping  to 
carry  the  burden  they  simply  add  their  own 


12  THE     WINNING    OF    THE    WEST 

weight  to  the  responsibility  already  upon  us. 

The  extravagant  way  of  living  here  causes 
many  people  to  cast  overboard  any  serious  idea 
of  responsibility  for  the  Christian  work  of  the 
state.  There  are  those  who  never  allow  their 
right  hands  to  know  what  their  left  hands  are 
doing — if  they  did  their  right  hands  would  be 
so  ashamed  that  more  was  not  being  done  that 
they  would  hide  themselves  deep  in  the  pockets 
of  these  individuals.  There  are  Christian  fam- 
ilies who  spend  more  on  the  theater  every 
year  than  they  do  to  evangelize  the  wrorld. 
There  are  women  who  come  to  church  wear- 
ing hats  which  cost  twenty  or  thirty  dollars 
and  then  give  fifty  cents  or  a  dollar  to  Christ- 
ianize their  own  state.  When  we  look  at  the 
disproportion  in  many  homes  between  the 
amounts  spent  for  luxury,  pleasure,  self-indul- 
gence and  the  amount  spent  to  make  strong 
the  work  of  Christ  in  the  state  and  to  make 
easier  the  lot  of  the  home  missionary,  we  won- 
der if  we  are  worthy  to  be  called  Christians. 

"Now  we  desire  a  better  country"  the  apostle 
cried  of  old,  "that  is  a  heavenly."  He  was  not 
thinking  of  death  and  the  hereafter.  He  was 
not  contrasting  earth  and  sky;  his  mind  was 
not  on  the  geography  of  the  situation  at  all. 
"Now  we  desire  a  better  country  that  is  a 
heavenly" — a  country  with  a  rich  soil  under  it 
and  a  cl'ear  sky  above  it ;  a  country  with  splen- 


THE     WINNING    OF    THE     WEST  13 

did  material  resources  and  with  a  heaven  full  of 
ideals  and  principles  to  preside  over  its  fun- 
damental purposes !  Now  we  desire  a  better 
country,  a  country  where  men  and  women  live 
daily  under  the  empire  of  conscience,  under 
the  powert  of  divine  grace,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  that  Holy  Spirit,  who  is  sent  to  lead 
us  into  all'  truth  and  into  life  eternal. 

We  have  gone  into  many  of  those  neglected 
places  in  California  and  have  built  there  our 
little  places  of  worship  with  their  tiny  spires 
pointing  upward.  But  a  building  is  not  a 
church !  When  Jesus  said  "On  this,  I  will 
build,"  He  was  not  pointing  to  a  building  or 
to  the  foundation  of  a  building.  His  eye  was 
on  a  man,  an  energetic,  warm-hearted,  devoted, 
Christian  man.  In  the  battles  of  war  it  is  the 
man  behind  the  gun  who  decides  the  issue. 
And  in  the  greater  battl'es  of  peace  it  is  the  man 
behind  the  church  who  determines  whether  or 
not  it  will  take  a  position  of  influence  and 
leadership  in  the  larger  life  of  the  community. 
If  we  could  have  sustained  them  more  ade- 
quately we  might  have  been  sending  into  all 
these  frontier  communities,  men  of  larger  build, 
men  with  more  complete  equipment,  men  able 
to  possess  themselves  of  books  and  other  aids 
to  growth,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  whole 
Christian  impress  upon  the  life  of  our  state 
more  profound  and  helpful. 


14  THE;   WINNING   OF   THE   WEST 

The  responsibility  for  all  this  is  upon  us. 
Ten  years  ago  the  Congregational'  people  of 
this  State  voted  to  be  no  longer  dependent 
upon  the  generosity  of  Massachusetts  and  Con- 
necticut and  Ohio.  They  voted  to  be  self- 
supporting  and  to  become  responsible  for  their 
own  Christian  work.  During  these  years  I 
have  been  President  of  the  California  Home 
Missionary  Society.  We  correspond  with 
these  men  in  the  field;  we  keep  ourselves  in 
touch  with  their  work.  Month  after  month 
we  meet  as  directors  and  hear  reports  from 
our  Superintendent,  who  travels  among  these 
struggling  churches.  And  when  I  realize  the 
difficulty  and  hardship  of  many  of  these  fields, 
when  I  realize  not  only  in  the  newspapers,  but 
in  my  own  bills,  that  the  cost  of  living  has  ad- 
vanced from  thirty  to  forty  per  cent,  the  ef- 
forts of  these  brave  men  and  their  brave  wives 
to  keep  the  torch  of  Christian  influence  lighted 
and  shining  in  all  these  needy  places,  make  an 
effective  appeal  to  my  heart-strings  and  to  my 
purse-strings. 

We  ought  certainly  to  match  the  physical 
attractions  of  our  State  with  a  corresponding 
amount  and  quality  of  spiritual  advantage.  If 
we  are  ready  to  undertake  this  we  shall  find 
a  generous  measure  of  work  cut  out  for  us. 
The  people  of  Southern  California  have  adver- 
tised and  boasted  of  their  portion  of  the  State 


THE     WINNING     OF    THE     WEST  15 

until  one  might  think  that  the  real  centers  of 
interest  all  lay  somewhere  south  of  Tehachapi. 
But  the  truth  is  the  things  which  make  Cali- 
fornia great  are  here.  Mount  Shasta  and  Yo- 
semite  Valley,  Hetch  Hetchy  and  the  King's 
River  Canyon,  Lake  Tahoe  and  the  Big  Trees, 
the  Golden  Gate  and  Lick  Observatory  on 
Mount  Hamilton,  the  wide  wheat  fields,  the 
great  forests  and  the  deep;  mines,  the  Univer- 
sity of  California  and  Stanford  University,  are 
all  here  in  Northern  California.  And  it  is  for 
us  to  match  these  abundant  resources  and  op- 
portunities with  a,  ministry  of  Christian  in- 
fluence that  shall  make  our  State  all  glorious 
within  as  well  as  without. 

We  have  by  no  means  kept  pace,  and  there 
is  a  necessity  upon  us  for  an  enlargement  of 
our  faith,  our  service  and  our  gifts.  In  a  re- 
cent year,  when  it  was  ascertained  from  the 
religious  census  that  the  Protestant  Church 
membership  of  the  United  States  amounted 
to  one-fifth  of  the  population,  here  in  Califor- 
nia it  amounted  to  only  one-twentieth.  And 
while  we  have  no  hard  words  to  say  of  our 
Christian  friends  who  receive  their  ideals  from 
Rome,  we  believe  it  is  for  the  good  of  our 
country  that  there  should  be  a  much  larger 
percentage  of  those  who  take  the  freer  and 
more  modern  path  of  life.  Our  climate  gives 
us  length  of  life,  but  to  estimate  life  in  its 


16  THE     WINNING    OF    THE    WEST 

true  proportions  one  must  multiply  the  length 
by  the  breadth  and  again  by  the  height  and 
the  depth.  We  are  called  upon  to  give  to  the 
life  of  our  State  a  greater  breadth  of  interest 
and  that  height  and  depth  of  aspiration  and 
purpose  which  comes  through  Christian  faith, 
in  order  to  confer  upon  it  a  finer  symmetry 
and  a  larger  measure  of  completeness. 

God  has  two  hands,  for  we  are  made  in  many 
ways  after  His  likeness  and  image.  With  one 
hand  He  has  been  preparing  this  place  of  priv- 
ilege, of  opportunity,  of  possible  influence  upon 
the  larger  life  of  the  race.  He  has  been  carry- 
ing to  this  spot  vast  amounts  of  that  plastic 
clay  which  is  ready  to  take  an  impress  that 
will  have  an  effect  reaching  on  into  the 
ages.  And  with  His  other  hand  He  is  ready 
to  use  the  die  that  shall  stamp  upon  it  the 
features  of  the  life  of  the  Son  of  God.  He  is 
waiting  for  us  to  furnish  Him  the  means,  for 
He  works  uniformly  through  human  instru- 
ments. Fill  the  great  Hand  of  God  anew  with 
these  better  agencies  of  His  holy  purpose,  with 
those  well-trained  and  well-equipped  men  of 
consecration  who  shall  go  into  all  the  needy 
places  of  this  State  to  impress  upon  the  life 
there  the  qualities  they  have  gained  through 
fellowship  with  the  Savior  of  men. 

January  23rd,  1910. 


IITH  BROST^ 

i  |Booir^up'— -  - ' 


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